Are Zanox playing with Scumware???

Affiliate Money Grabbers written by Doug Scott

zanox – http://www.zanox.com – the global market leader in performance-based multichannel commerce, has added a series of social networking sites to its UK affiliate network. Webfetti, Zwinky and Smiley Central are all toolbar-based services which allow consumers to enhance their online presence and communication.

Zwinky – http://www.zwinky.com – is a customisable social avatar that helps people create and express their online brand or persona. Zwinky gives users a fun, free and easy way to show off personal style and mood, and express themselves visually on multiple social networking sites and blogs. Users also create an online personal profile, access their network of contacts and communicate from anywhere on the Web where their character is displayed update automatically.

Webfetti – http://www.webfetti.com – is a free, web-based application that allows users to easily customise their social networking profile pages and blogs on sites such as MySpace. Users can improve the look of their profile pages with different layouts, smileys, glitter letters, glitter graphics and video.

Smiley Central – http://www.smileycentral.com – is a free Smileys website launched in June 2003 which revolutionised the industry when it introduced flash-based “super” smileys. With more than 10,000 to choose from, smileys from Smiley Central work with instant messaging applications, email programs, blogs and mobile devices.

Source:

http://www.searchbyheadlines.com/posted_news/106116.html

Popularity: 2% [?]

How to create a controversey and get some business

Affiliate Money Grabbers written by Doug Scott

Find a subject that is controversial but related to your industry, like voucher codes and www.promotions.co.uk. Find the forums where this topic is being discussed like www.affiliates4u.com. Decide what your stance is to be, mine is always the same I am the purist as it matches with my character and so my posts are always genuinely what I think.

Ok  so go and create some genuinely real threads that are useful or join in on other threads like these:

Thread 1

Thread 2

Thread 3

Then actively join in the threads, don’t hold punches, say what you really believe ( so few people ever do) and you will be gauranteed to get a conversation going. You will get lots of wishy washy people comment, but also some people who have oposing views. This is great as you now have a dialogue going without you being involved.

Make sure to have in your signature what you are offering and then wait. Firstly you will get people reading the thread contacting you, but also if the thread is genuinely useful ( remember this is the key thing you must do) then other forums blogs will link to it, you get more people contacting you. Google will then love this and the pages will rank for a lot of related terms like:

voucher code issues

Then you get more people contacting you….job done

Welcome to fun, but remember you need to make what you say genuinely useful or insightful.

Doug

Popularity: 2% [?]

Happy New Year – More Spotify Signups

Affiliate Money Grabbers written by Doug Scott

That good old Geordie Boy Jonnie Forster at Spotify gave me a present, some more signups for Spotify

Free music:)

https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/

Now I know he was a great guy when at Valueclick, honest you were Jonnie:) But I thought they would have removed his profile from their site as he left over a year ago, maybe even 2.

http://www.valueclick.se/about/management.html#jforster

Doug thinks Itunes is stuffed

Shanes overview

Popularity: 2% [?]

I have entered CJ competition

Affiliate Money Grabbers written by Doug Scott

CJ competition

Can you beat my photo????

Cheers

Doug going to California on a flat bed courtesy of CJ

Popularity: 2% [?]

Will the real Mark Walters please come forward

Affiliate Money Grabbers written by Doug Scott

So anyone care to say who it is, you may have spoken to him on one of his new phones or heard his rants on a4u:

No chance

….Maybe

My guess is this is him

. Looks too smooth

Maybe in his youth

Can you help please

Doug…….has a silly photo already

Popularity: 2% [?]

Top 9 Myths about Affiliate Programmes

Affiliate Money Grabbers written by Doug Scott

Top 9 Myths about Affiliate Programmes

There are a lot of myths associated with affiliate programmes and if any affiliate programme is going to be ‘worth its salt’ then these need to be debunked. So what are they and why have they arisen?

Myth No. 1: always choose a programme that pays high commission.

In fact this should perhaps read ONLY join a programme that pays high commission, since this seems to be the attitude of many webmasters.

Yet the reality is that sometimes it is better to have a low commission rate and get real, tangible leads that will actually follow through, rather than simply going for a high commission rate, where the visitors you direct will simply fail to make a purchase because they do not like the site or they find it hard to use.

Myth No 2: add banner ads for maximum results.

Banner ads are simply not the answer to every marketing problem and often they will fail to generate any traffic to your site. Most people dislike banner ads and just don’t use them; so they are of little use. If you really want to use some kind of advertisement then often a testimonial can be far more effective and can lead to visitors naturally following through.

Myth No 3: don’t worry about the quality of the sites in the programme.

This is a fundamental error; if visitors to the site feel they cannot trust it or they cannot make secure purchases or it simply looks amateurish, then they will leave the site and not follow through. So instead of just thinking that the other sites will be ok, take time to research them, particularly from the point of view of your customers, so that you can try to see any flaws in the design of the websites. If there are flaws then avoid this programme.

Myth No 4: in 10 Minutes you will be earning megabucks.

This simply is not true; it comes back to the old saying that ‘If something looks too good to be true, then it generally is’. This is because if you establish a programme in just a few minutes, then you are probably just relying on banner ads or pretty basic graphics. Instead, it is far better to set up a good, logical and natural set of links to an affiliate problem, and in this way you can ensure that your programme is more effective than if it is clumsy and doesn’t flow seamlessly along with the rest of your website. So take the time and put the effort in so that you can maximise your chances of real returns.

Myth No 5: if you have 1000s of affiliates you will make big bucks.

This again simply does not happen in reality; you may find that there are 2-3,000 affiliates who are all in your network, but there is no point in having them if they don’t actually buy anything. Make sure that you take time and trouble to research the kind of programmes that will generate potential customers, rather than people who simply aren’t interested!

Myth No 6: it is easier to allow the network hosts to facilitate payment.

If you let the network hosts facilitate payment then you have effectively given up a good deal of control and you will have to pay them an extra fee every time that they handle transactions. Also if you handle payments directly then you get to interact directly with your customer and hopefully have them coming back again and again!

Myth No 7: only a big name network will actually be successful for you.

Now this really is a way to get people to join up to an affiliate programme. After all, if only the big fish can help you then why not earth would you ever want to choose any provider other than a big name?

Well therein lays the rub; this is just a clever trick that the big names have pulled to try and get people to stay with them. In fact, the real success of any affiliate programme is the time and effort that YOU put into making it a success and making sure that it does attract potential customers who are interested and not just people who really don’t care.

Myth No 8: it’s too late to get on board with affiliate marketing.

Again, this is a way of keeping things ‘sewn up’. It may well be true that there are more affiliates around who are eager to get their own share of the market, but the reality is that more and more people are going online and so the number of affiliates has risen. The amount of people who are using the internet is also rising quite dramatically, so there is no reason to assume that you have missed the boat, instead you should simply hop on and come along for the ride!

Myth No 9: you can earn money without any increased traffic.

This myth is almost astounding; the whole basis of affiliate marketing is linked in with increasing the website traffic to your site. If no traffic visits the affiliate website then how do you get customers? Are they simply virtual customers or phantom customers? It just doesn’t add up, you really do need to increase website traffic and you can only do this if you take the time and trouble to sort out a good programme and adopt a strategic approach to the whole business.

Any programme that promises you or tells you that you can earn money without increased traffic is simply being false. It may take a little time and it can be a little labour intensive, at least to start off with, but if you are going to do it you may as well do it right and make it a success from the start, rather than just thinking you will get maximum rewards for minimum effort. Sadly life just doesn’t work in this way!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Anything Chris can do, we can do better

Affiliate Money Grabbers, What we are doing written by Doug Scott

Mr Clarkson of www.sunshine.co.uk fame reckons he should win the EConsultancy Award for innovation for the award “Innovation in Affiliate Marketing”, for what he did with wordpress or sunpress. Come on lets be honest, on the surface it may look good, but it’s only a bloody skin on top of wordpress. You could knock that up in an afternoon.

Come on now a bit of innovation is something like www.promotions.co.uk, it sorts out a problem for lots of people rather than just making money for Chris. So we have applied.

Read his pitch here, then and then vote for us:)

Fill out the form here – Vote for us – Innovation in Affiliate Marketing. Also give me a vote for – Most Innovative Person in Digital Marketing. It’s free to enter.

then email it to – awards@e-consultancy.com

Some reason to do it:

1. Ours is a better idea
2. Chris won the A4U award already
3. Chris loosing would be funny
4. Doug is awful at accepting prizes

Doug has entered

Popularity: 2% [?]

How Affiliates Can Beat the Recession

Affiliate Money Grabbers written by Doug Scott

How Affiliates Can Beat the Recession

All we seem to hear about these days is recession, the credit crunch and how things are going to get worse. So are affiliates the answer to all our problems? Can affiliates beat the recession, or is this simply a scheme that will end up costing you time, effort and perhaps more importantly, more money?

Well affiliates may be able to help, but if you believe all the hype and think that you can get linked up to affiliates and then just sit back and watch the money roll in after a few minutes, then you are sadly mistaken. Affiliates can help to beat the recession, but you should not simply think that they will be able to do it successfully single-handedly, leaving you rolling in money whilst everyone else struggles.

One of the most important things to bear in mind when operating in a recession is that money is tight and more and more people are trying to get their hands on pots of money that are being closely guarded by their owners. This means that you will have to work just that extra little bit harder to succeed and help your affiliates succeed also.

However, there is another side to this: there are still some products that will sell, even in a recession. Often people will cut back on many different kinds of luxuries, but will still make sure that they can afford at least a few treats for themselves. Or they may buy different things: people who are concerned by their heating bills may want to buy a fleece for their bed to ‘heat’ it without using electricity. Or people who are fed up with the ever increasing price of fuel may suddenly think about buying a fold up bike and get healthy at the same time (perhaps even saving money on gym fees). Mind you have a habit of breaking bikes and needing loads of bike parts :)

So in order to beat the recession, affiliates have to get smarter and work just that little bit harder. You have to think about what products will still sell and how you can get in on the action! The best way to do this is by analysing and thinking about potential customers. What will they want and what will tempt them to buy it? What is so good about the product and why would you even want to endorse it?

Then you have to establish the links through your website in a way that will encourage people to buy. Don’t be half hearted or else it simply won’t work. The more time and effort that you put into making sure that you are associated with marketers that have a good, buyable product at a reasonable commission, the more likely you are to succeed.

At the end of the day affiliate programmes can earn you decent money, but they will not transform your life overnight and potentially, will not transform it to a radical degree. But they can help you to beat the recession and to remain comfortable in life.

Doug running promotions.co.uk :)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Which PPC affiliate or network will go bust first?

Affiliate Money Grabbers written by Doug Scott

Simple background of PPC affiliates:

• They buy traffic some times on account and some times on credit cards from google for adwords.
• They send traffic into a merchant and get paid for sales via a network
• A network at the end of each month will invoice a merchant for completed sales that month – lets assume it takes 30 days for this to settle.
• The merchant will settle the account with a network normally in 30 days of the network producing an invoice.
• A network will settle with an affiliate normally 30 days later.
• So from the day an affiliate sends a visitor to a merchant it can be 90 days until they are paid for a sale, that’s assuming that there is no confusion, lost invoices, etc.

Now lets think what happens if a merchant is in financial difficulty.

• A merchant accepts all traffic and take all sales
• A merchant makes up reasons/excuses why they missed a payment to a network
• As a ppc affiliate you assume just an accounting mess up, so you keep sending trafffic
• Lets assume you wait an extra 30 days until you make a decision.
• So for almost 120 days you have been buying traffic and sending it to a merchant assuming you will be paid
• The merchant declares themselves bankrupt
• As an affiliate don’t get paid for the past 120 days of sales
• As an affiliate you have spent ppc for 120 days
• Now some networks will pay the comissions, but in the current climate I can’t see this continuing.
• So a double whammy, you spent the money and got nothing back over a period.

Now lets think a large airline/tour operator, like XL, goes bust. This is only guessing, but here goes:

XL took bookings until the lastminute

• they had a massive affiliate scheme with affiliate future
• so either Af take the hit or the affiliates did?
• niether a large affiliate or a network with overheads can afford to keep this happening
• as more merchants look to affiliacy as a no risk business, how do affiliates and/or networks adapt? Maybe merchants have to pay deposits upfront to reduce the risk for all involved.

Doug thinking

Popularity: 1% [?]

Looking for a consultant

Affiliate Money Grabbers written by Doug Scott

I just thought I would give a prod for Keith Budden as I met him last week.

If you are looking for someone who will tell you the truth about affiliate marketing, then say hello to Keith.

He told me he was so surprised that so many people wanted to talk to him about them helping him. Keith don’t be surprised…..in the valley of the blind the one eyed man is king. In this world there are many blind people and very few like you have 2 eyes.

He is based in the South so if you are looking for London jobs then give Keith a call

Doug didn’t get paid for this either, but Keith better buy him a beer:)

Keith Budden

His agency

Popularity: 1% [?]